Briefly: Scarlett, Duke, Sci-Fi, Roadblock and Helix travel to Tokyo to uncover more details about a “secret” revealed by a package the team retrieved in cartoon superhero fashion, retold as a flashback in the book’s opening scene. There, they meet Snake Eyes and are introduced to Cobra, the Baroness and a whole lot of b-grade monster-movie silliness.

There are parallels here to what is happening in the “G.I. Joe: Cobra” storylines in what is arguably IDW’s finest G.I. Joe title in terms of Cobra’s reliance on religious fanaticism, and also to what we’re starting to see in the new animated series “G.I. Joe: Renegades” with regard to biological experimentation.

However, “Noir” feels like a mish-mash of ideas pulled from other sources that fail to come together into any sort of coherent story. It almost feels like bad fanfic being given the guise of a legitimate story — the characterizations aren’t familiar (Helix, in particular, has been displayed as a supersolider in IDW’s other G.I. Joe works, but is relegated to useless sidebar “you’re too young to sit at the big kids table” status here — you could completely eliminate the Helix character from this story and nothing changes); the art emphasises T&A at every possible opportunity; the fight scenes feel like they’re filled with magic bullets that fell opponents in every direction when a hero simply steps into the room; there’s a Starship Troopers-esque moment when a Joe is impaled by a spike through the chest, although there’s no apparent consequence to that injury at any point in the story after it occurs.

All of these things may relate well to the manga look and feel that IDW is trying with this title, but at the end of the day it just doesn’t feel like “G.I. Joe.” It’s only recognizable as such because the characters have names we’ve heard before.These nagging things add up; on their own, none of them is enough to bring a book down. But in concert, they quickly bring “Noir” to its knees.

It’s good to see that IDW willing to take some risks with the G.I. Joe universe, and “G.I. Joe: Noir” is definitely a risk. There are plenty of opportunities for unique and interesting stories when writers are allowed to stretch beyond the confines of a comfortable and known universe. Though the media are different, the first two episodes of “Renegades” are a good example of what can go right; through the first issue, it’s difficult to see “Noir” having similar success.

The art (more on that later) is going to have a hard time pulling in impulse purchasers, and IDW’s asking a lot of the readers who would be willing to give the company some leeway to pursue this story with a $7.99 entry point — honestly, that’s a tough sell. At the end of the day a reader would drop the same $16 on the planned two issues of “Noir” that he or she would on a four-issue miniseries at $3.99 an issue, but that mental hurdle of dropping eight bucks on a single issue may be difficult to overcome — particularly when there just isn’t much payoff with this particular title. Considering your eight dollars could buy two significantly better issues of IDW’s other G.I. Joe series, it’s difficult to recommend “Noir.”

ART
You’re either going to be OK with the art in “Noir” or you’re going to absolutely hate it. Bevilacqua presents very basic grayscale panels that aren’t very deep; most of them have around three tones of grey for foreground-midrange-background, and that’s about it. He has some fun with the character poses; the movement and action in the book are very dynamic, and that helped add a lot to the storytelling (a punch on Page 39/Panel 2 is a good example). There’s not much in the way of varied facial expressions either; most are selected from a limited pallette of stoic/stern/surprised.

The sound effects are hand-drawn, which you don’t see much of any more. There doesn’t seem to be much, if anything, done in the way of touchup work done in Photoshop either; movement is shown with traditional motion lines without some of the blurring you commonly see in other books. Other than the lettering, it has a very hand-crafted feel; sometimes it works very well (the full-page splashes on 18 and 28 are very nice), and sometimes it just doesn’t (Scarlett, pretty much everywhere — her boobs are out of control — or the “hairy arm” effect when motion lines are drastically overapplied).

The art reflects “Noir’s” status as an experiment for IDW. The black-and-white art makes it difficult to get a feel for the redesigned characters; in an alternate-universe book like this you can help sell character redesigns and let the reader know who’s who through a familiar color palette, which isn’t possible here. It makes things a little challenging at times – you’re basically going by hair, especially with the female characters.

Just briefly on the character designs: Dr. Mindbender is great; Snake Eyes is simple and reminiscent of the “Rise of Cobra” design; overall he looks great; Baroness is… interesting; Sci-Fi looks like a reject from a ’90s “X-Men” book.

COVERS
IDW put all of its eggs in one basket with “Noir” — both the regular and retail-incentive covers were done by Bevilacqua. The retailer incentive cover with the Cobra sigil is the better of the two, in spite of Scarlett being posed as she is solely for the purposes of showing off her ass.

PREVIEW
You can view a five-page preview of Noir at IDW’s repository at issuu.com, here.

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Took Friday off last week to have a long weekend after having Veteran’s Day off on Thursday.

Missed two days this week home with sick Wife (who is improving, but home again today even though I came into work). Today feels like my second Monday of the week, and is only the second day out of the last eight that I’ve been in the office. I’m so far behind I’m not even sure where to start.

Next week is Thanksgiving. Will miss two days next week also.

Bye bye, November.

Studio Night
Tonight is the second studio night at Trek North that I’m going to try and attend. I have no idea what I’m going to work on; I’ll probably put some Invincible books on my iPad over lunch and try to copy some of Ryan Ottley’s stuff. Would rather work out of the nude model books I downloaded, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to do in a room full of middle- and high-school kids. 🙂

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Only eight posts on here in October. None so far in November (pending this thing, of course). No updates to my sketch diary since Oct. 26, and only two since I quit doing it every day on Oct. 11.

Everything feels like work. The sketch diary was really fun initially, and I could see some things improving. But then I started just shoveling out the same old stuff because I felt I needed to have *something* up every day; even though most days I don’t have much to say. it’s frustrating.

The hockey history wall killed me at work; not because it was difficult, but because by the time it launched I was so sick of dealing with it that coming to work and knowing that thing was all I had to look forward to made me nauseous.

As a temporary distraction, I started playing World of Warcraft again a few weeks ago. Mel’s been playing again for months, but I resisted the urge for the longest time to join her. My second significant “retirement” from the game started in January; my first lasted about six months, so for this one to last about nine was somewhat of an achievement I guess. But the same things are happening now as when I was playing before my last two retirements: In large part, I’m logged in and finding things to do in the game simply for the sake of doing something in the game, I’m doing boring, repetitive stuff every day because by the mechanics of the game dictate that it can be done every day (in some cases for an incremental reward – one one-hundredth of a step further down to a certain reward, for instance, or a bag full of randomly-determined treasure that is usually worthless garbage but has a one-half of one percent chance to contain something very cool).

And as I’ve been doing this, I’ve quit drawing. Again. I think it’s to the point that I’m just afraid to be bad at it and worried that I’m not going to get any better. When I do take the time to draw, I *hate* the stuff I’m producing right now. I hate it. Even though I can see improvement over what I was doing just a few months ago, I still think the things I’m doing are generally terrible. But I’m at a loss for what to do to improve.

I add the blogs of artists to Google Reader almost daily, and they’re a vexing combination of inspiring and stomach-punchingly frustrating. I see what’s possible and it makes me want to be better, but then I start working and things just… don’t… work… Like most things, I’m mad that I can’t just flip a switch and produce the things I want to produce, and that on some level I realize that I am, in fact, capable of producing. The obscene amount of work that the people I think are great have done to become great remains lost on me.

As I give this post an editing pass, I’m getting hung up on the first sentence of Paragraph 3. “Everything feels like work.” Art is hard. Writing is hard. Having a marriage and a family is hard. Having a job is hard. Finding some way to maintain your sanity when all of those things are thrown into the blender to produce the delicious smoothie that is your life is hard. I don’t know why I think things shouldn’t “feel like work.” I just have this sense that in the past there was a version of me who didn’t feel this way; things came easier, things felt easier, things flowed better. I don’t think that is incorrect, because I know I haven’t always had this sense, as I currently do, that everything was such a challenge.

And while I’m trying to figure out how to get back to that place, things are continuing to slide. I don’t like it, and I’m going to keep trying to fix it.

Today’s fun fact: I did not know how to spell “nauseous” without looking it up. This, however, let me use “Terminology” on my iPad, which is an awesome app.

Today’s fun fact, Part 2: I’m writing this on a desktop blogging platform called Ecto. It’s my first go-round with it, and the first time I’ve tried an application like this since MarsEdit devoured my last attempt at a “This Week on Twitter” column.